Perhaps many people today suffer from low self-esteem. There could be many reasons for this, comparing ourselves to TV personalities or lifestyles, bad experiences at home or at school, or many other reasons.One of the troubles, I think , in relation to self-esteem, is that we are holding ourselves up against the wrong set of measures. Our self-esteem should not be based on how clever we are, nor how physically strong or beautiful we are, nor how talented we are in various ways, nor how wealthy we are. While each of these things may have value in the right context, that context should not include measures of self-esteem or self-worth. Should we measure ourselves at all - yes I think we should. We should aim at improving ourselves, by identifying our faults and seeking to improve on them. But having the right measure is essential, otherwise we may be working on the wrong things and towards the wrong goals. So on what basis then should we measure ourselves for the purposes of improving our self-worth? I believe it should be on our heart, and on our love. Thus it does not matter so much if you are not as articulate as someone, nor as knowledgeable, nor as clever. It does matter whether your intentions and actions are driven by love for others (and God) as compared with love for self or personal gain. Thus perhaps each day at least, we should introspect on our actions and motivations during the day, and seek to identify and eliminate those motivations and actions that arose from selfishness. Of course, improvement on this front will be substantially helped by prayer and requests for help, but most importantly we should be judging ourselves by the right measure.

Earlier I wrote about why there is suffering in the world. In short: out of respect for our free-will God allows us to do evil things. You may well say, 'well that is very nice, but not much of a comfort to those who are victims of evil. Why could God not allow only us freewill to only do good and not evil?' The short aswer is: then that would not be our freewill as we would be unable to do anything bad. In any case, the fact is that everything that happens must end up serving God's purposes, and thus ends up working for good. Regardless of whether you do good or evil, God - in his omni-potence - will turn whatever you do to a good purpose overall (although this may still have very negative consequences for those who persistently do evil). C.S Lewis explains this using the explanation that we serve either the simple good, or the complex good. To serve the simple good is to just do things with good intention, and all will work out well nice and easily. To serve the complex good is to do things with evil intention, which God will then have to - in a more complicated way - turn so that your actions also serve the greater good (but you will suffer some consequences). 'How can this be?' you may well ask. 'If someone murders someone, how can that do any good? How can getting people addicted to drugs be good?' The answer is that in the short-term it is certainly not good, it is most definitely evil. However, I think the key to understanding how things can turn out for good in the long run comes from considering forgiveness. Forgiveness is perhaps the hardest thing for people to do. However, it allows good to come out of even the most evil acts. The fact that forgiveness is so hard for us to do, yet so spiritually powerful, means that simply the act of forgiving someone an evil act can more than offset that act. This is demonstrated by God's greatest triumph, whereby Jesus was executed on the cross - completely unjustly, and under much pain and - perhaps worse for humans - much humiliation. The triumph, and the breaking of the evil of this act was in Jesus's forgiveness of those who persecuted Him. The crucifiction was a great demonstration for mankind on the highest possible spiritual achievement - forgiveness of even the most horrid acts. Thus, hard as it may be, this is one way in which evil can be turned to good, and the one injured materially (or otherwise) by evil can turn such an act into a great spiritual achievement for their own spiritual benefit. But It may also help to keep in mind that our life here on earth is short, and that God is omni-potent and has an eternity in which to make good on whatever injustices one may suffer during this life.

Palestinians mourn over the Nigim family, reportedly killed in an airstrike in Jabaliya on the Gaza Strip, August 4, 2014. (Photo: Sergey Ponomarev / The New York Times)

" But there will finally come a time when men will have attained to great knowledge and skill in all things and construct machines that will, like living, thinking men and animals, perform all human tasks. However, thereby many human hands will become idle and the stomachs of the poor, jobless people will go hungry."The text above is a prediction recorded by the Prophet Jakob Lorber in the 1800's. The prediction decribes a great technological age, but one with little faith in God. Since the timeline for this 'Age' is given as around 2000 years after Christ, one could be forgiven for believing that we are now in that very same age. However, it is not just the poor who are going hungry, we have people suffering far worse across the globe. We have human communities treating each other in the most inhuman ways, with hatreds that seemingly run so deep that one does indeed wonder if they can even be overcome without some sort of divine help, for sure our human attempts are well represented in the video below.Well there may be little we can do about these matters across the globe. But we can at least extend love to those around us - to support those that are suffering and fight for those who need a champion. One battle that is playing out in Australia is the plight of refugees. In Christianity we are called upon to help the homeless and poor, not to find excuses to turn away, citing 'practicality' as a reason to harden our hearts. Could you really imagine Jesus saying the sorts of things our politicians say when it comes to so-called 'boat people' (as though they are not people like 'us')? Would Jesus say, 'sorry I cannot help those desperate and in need, I don't have the resources'? I doubt it. More likely he would say something along the lines of: 'if you have two coats, give one to your brother.' Here in Australia most people have more material things than they need. We can certainly provide clothing and many other things besides. We can also certainly feed these people as well, especially since we have possibly been supplying them with food in their home countries for years (through our exports). Thus exactly why can't we help refugees? Why must we act in ways that lead to suffering - locking up people, including children? Do we as a nation really lack love to the extent that we can harden our hearts to these people? That we can turn away from their suffering and misery? And in fact make it worse by incarcerating them and psychologically abusing them. Do we really need to create a mini Gaza here, near Australia's borders, in the name of defending our land against poor, desperate and homeless people? In many other aspects of life we are told that we are responsible for ourselves, we are encouraged to take risks to start businesses - and the possible failure of these businesses is seen as a cost of 'progress'. Yet, when it comes to helping others there is no 'risk' taking to be found. There is, apparently, no progress to made in such domains through risk taking. We will not - as a community - 'risk' helping these people, we will not 'risk' seeing what can be done. No, risk is only for individual endeavours, it is an ideology to be applied selectively to defend our (selfish?) market system against change, to defend a (heartless?) system where people are seen as responsible for themselves alone. Risk cannot be used in attempts to extend love, to extend charity, to take chances helping other people. Such seems to be the bereft morality of the modern world. A world without faith in God and humanity, but an unquestioning faith in 'markets' and enterpreneurship. Perhaps even a world largely without love?